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I noticed that former State Sen. Kevin Coughlin of Cuyahoga Falls has officially withdrawn from the Republican race for the U.S. Senate in 2012. No surprise. Very few people were aware that he was ever in the race.
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You have to admire Mitt Romney's balletic manner in pirouetting from one side of an issue to the other. After declaring he fully supported Kasich on Senate Bill 5 (" I fully stand with John Kasich"), Romney arrived in Ohio to declare to reporters that he doesn't get involved in state ballot issues. But within a matter of hours, he asserted that he is "110 pct. in Kasich's corner on Issue 2, the repeal referendum that is enjoying a 25 pct. margin over the law's supporters in the latest polls. He said he was "sorry if I caused confusion." At least you can say this about Mitt: Most politicians staring at those poll numbers would prefer to say something nice about the Cleveland Browns instead and leave SB 5 to its fate. There is a fine line between courage and stupidity.
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WHEN A TV INTERVIEWER REMINDED RICK PERRY THAT HIS FLAT TAX PLAN WOULD BE A BIG BOOST FOR THE WEALTHIEST ONE PERCENT IN AMERICA, HE SAID HE DIDN'T "CARE ABOUT THAT." IMPRESSED BY HIS SENSITIVITY TO ROYALTY, FOX NEWS IS GIVING PERRY AN ENTIRE HOUR TO HIMSELF SUNDAY.
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Among the no-shows for the Akron mayoral debate this week was Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff. History tells us that when the boss doesn't show up to give at least moral support to the Republican candidate, you can bet that he's decided that the outcome has been settled in favor of Mayor Plusquellic.
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2 comments:
Mitt Romney's back-and-forth scrambling on various issues is symptomatic of the way he is bending himself into a pretzel to pander to the Tea Party know-nothings as he strives to win the GOP nomination. His self-contradictions on Ohio's Issue 2 is simply the latest example. It's like watching a guy playing badminton with himself. He even begrudges his own initiative for establishing a workable and comprehensive health care program for Massachusetts when he was the state's governor. An initiative, one might add, that served as a model for President Obama's plan. It's one thing to be a bumbling panderer, quite another to be seen as a hypocrite.
Apart from the callousness of Perry's shrug-off of the impact on low- and moderate-income taxpayers of his flat-tax plan, that plan -- like the candidate himself -- is so dense and bereft of details that it's hard to say exactly how it might fare on what the economists call a "distribution table." That's a chart showing how various income groups would be affected if such a plan were ever to become law. Cain's 9-9-9 plan has been rather thoroughly vetted by the economics crowd and found to be a boon to the rich and a bane for the poor and working stiffs. Until the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office parse Perry's plan, the extent of damage it is likely to do to the theory of fairness remains uncertain. What is certain is that, like all of the flat-tax plans proposed so far, the wealthiest Americans are sure to make out like bandits, the middle-income and working poor are going to shoulder a heavier burden, and the income gap between the wealthiest 10 percent and the remaining 90 percent of taxpayers is going to continue to widen. At the same time, if any of the lineup of GOP presidential candidates along with their running mates in Congress are elected or re-elected next fall, the nation's safety net, health care, and environmental protection programs will be riddled. So the question now is whether voters in the 2012 elections are going to let this happen.
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